Tradition 0.5: A Case for “No Creed but the Bible”
by Kessia Reyne Bennett
Tradition 0.5: A Case for “No Creed But The Bible” Kessia Reyne Bennett (Trinity Evangelical Divinity School)
ATS, November 2013
What I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach. It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask, “Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?” Nor is it beyond the sea, so that you have to ask, “Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?” No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it. (Deuteronomy 30:11-4)
Introduction
Tradition 0, 1, 2
Sola Scriptura––it was the slogan of the Reformation and it remains the
treasured possession of Evangelicals today. Some historical theologians, however, want to
correct what they see as a misinterpretation of what the magisterial Reformers actually meant
by these words. These Reformers, it is said, insisted on sola Scriptura (“by Scripture alone”),
not what has been termed “solo” Scriptura (“the Bible only”). They did not cast off tradition
as worthless, but valued traditional readings of Scripture as “biblical tradition” having
ministerial authority under the magisterial authority of Scripture.1 Those who advocate for
this relationship between Scripture and tradition emphasize that it “is a single-source theory
of doctrine: doctrine is based upon Scripture, and ‘tradition’ refers to a ‘traditional way of
interpreting Scripture,”2 even for modern times.3 Heiko A. Oberman refers to this as
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1!Keith!A.!Mathison,!The$Shape$of$Sola!Scriptura!(Moscow,!ID:!Canon,!2001);!Alister!E.!McGrath,!Reformation$Thought:$An$Introduction!(Cambridge,!MA:!Basil!Blackwell,!1988),!95K116;!Heiko!A.!Oberman,!The$Dawn$of$the$Reformation!(Edinburgh:!T&T!Clark,!1986),!269K296.!
2!McGrath,!Reformation$Thought,!97.!Emphasis!in!the!original.!
3!Robert!W.!Jenson,!seeking!to!reclaim!the!creeds!as!regula$fidei,!advocates!what!he!calls!a!“creedal!critical!theory”!as!a!hermeneutical!method:!reading!
! 1!
Tradition 1, a view that he traces back to patristic theologians who argued for “ruled
readings” of Scripture to combat heresies. This is in contrast to what Oberman calls Tradition
2, a “two-sources theory which allows for an extra-biblical oral tradition”4 which stands
beside Scripture as authoritative for belief and practice.
Oberman’s terms “Tradition 1” and “Tradition 2” have been adopted by many
other historical theologians, and Alister McGrath added “Tradition 0” to refer to those radical
Reformers who held to a view of Scripture to the exclusion of any tradition. McGrath
helpfully summarizes with examples from the sixteenth century:
Tradition 2: The Council of Trent
Tradition 1: The magisterial Reformation
Tradition 0: The radical Reformation5
The charges fall heavy on those who hold to Tradition 0. In supposed contrast
to the magisterial Reformers, “the Radicals tried to flee from inheritance”6 and the “most
significant practical result has been the scandal of Protestant sectarianism.” To reject
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Scripture!in!light!of!the!creeds.!Canon$and$Creed$(Louisville,!KY:!Westminster!John!Knox,!2010),!82.!The!Theological!Interpretation!of!Scripture!movement!is!largely!sympathetic!to!the!ruled!reading!offered!by!the!creeds.!See!Daniel!J.!Treier,!Introducting$Theological$Interpretation$of$Scripture:$Recovering$a$Christian$Practice!(Grand!Rapids,!MI:!2008).!!
4!Oberman,!280.!!
5!McGrath,!106.!!
6!Timothy!Ward,!Words$of$Life:$Scripture$as$the$Living$and$Active$Word$of$God$(Downers!Grove,!IL:!InterVarsity!Press,!2009),!148.!!
! 2!
Tradition 1 in favor of “no creed but the Bible” is “to proceed with arrogance, to privilege
particularity, and to undermine the catholicity of Christ’s church.”7
The criticisms of Tradition 0 are basically two. First, critics charge, it naively
ignores the utter fact that tradition influences every reader of Scripture—this I know, for
postmodernism tells me so. Second, it refuses to acknowledge the ministerial yet genuine
authority of some tradition, creeds in particular. The first objection I meet with agreement.
Pretending that one can live, interpret, and worship in a tradition-less vacuum will lead to
confusion and uncritical use of some traditions. As Timothy Ward remarks, those who
ostensibly reject all tradition instead “smuggle ‘tradition’ in, without identifying it as such.”8
The second objection is more troubling, more complex. It employs the concept “authority,”
the fulcrum upon which balances the Scripture-tradition question and the item to which I will
be devoting much of my attention in this essay.
Tradition 0.5
Given the scheme briefly outlined above (Tradition 2, 1, and 0), I would like
to propose and advocate “Tradition 0.5,” a position between Tradition 0 (the Bible alone,
with no acknowledgement of tradition) and Tradition 1 (the Bible supreme but accompanied
by “biblical” tradition).9 This view maintains “no creed but the Bible,” but in an awareness
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!7!Carl!L.!Beckwith,!“The!Reformers!and!the!Nicene!Faith:!An!Assumed!
Catholicity”!in!Evangelicals$and$Nicene$Faith:$Proclaiming$the$Apostolic$Witness,!ed.!Timothy!George!(Grand!Rapids,!MI:!Baker!Academic,!2011),!61K62.!!
8!Ward,!150.!
9!I!put!“biblical”!in!quotation!marks!not!because!I!think!there!can!be!no!authentically!biblical!tradition,!but!because!I!wish!to!draw!attention!to!the!necessity!of!evaluating!all!tradition!to!determine!if!it!truly!is!biblical.!
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“of the inevitability of descriptive frameworks.”10 Tradition 0.5 acknowledges tradition, even
appreciates it as both a theological help and the “given” cultural context, yet without granting
authority to it. Oberman’s scheme is built on the assumption that the key issue is not
“Scripture or tradition,” but “rather the clash between … concepts of tradition.”11 If Tradition
2 understands tradition as another form of revelation, Tradition 1 understands it as a Spirit-ed
way of reading Scripture, and Tradition 0 understands it as an unfortunate obstruction, it
could be said that Tradition 0.5 understands it as the context of the faith community:
inescapable, necessary, yet corrigible.
A full articulation of “Tradition 0.5” is too ambitious for this paper. Instead, I
will engage directly with the issue of creeds as authoritative. To bring some specificity to this
discussion, I will focus my attention on the Nicene Creed in particular. I will attempt to
demonstrate some of the difficulties involved in upholding the creeds as authoritative. On the
basis of the sufficiency, clarity, and normativity of Scripture I do not believe that the creeds
have any inherent authority for Christians, though they are useful aids in theology.
I would like to be clear about what I am not arguing: that writing and using
summaries of faith is wrong or anti-biblical; that the contemporary Church has no use for the
ancient creeds; that the ancient creeds are wrong in their judgments about the Trinity. Also, a
few definitions are required. I am defining a creed as an occasional, concise, formal
statement of belief associated with one of the seven ecumenical councils of the ancient
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!10!Kevin!J.!Vanhoozer,!Is$There$A$Meaning$in$this$Text?:$The$Bible,$The$
Reader,$and$the$Morality$of$Literary$Knowledge!(Grand!Rapids,!MI:!Zondervan,!1998),!321.!
11!Oberman,!270.!
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Christian Church, and intended to be binding on the universal Church.12 Though similar, a
confession does not have the same ecumenical, catholic vision as does a creed. It is “a public
statement of what a particular church or denomination believes that Scripture teaches in a
synthetic form.”13
Authority
Drawing from Michael Rea’s work,14 I am defining authority as decisive say-
so for person C in domain D. That is, an authority is such when it provides decisive reasons
for person C to believe or to do something in domain D. The basic inquiry, then, is Does the
Nicene Creed have decisive say-so for the Christian in the domain of theology?
Theologians from Traditions 0, 1, and some from 2, would agree that the
Bible is more authoritative than the Nicene Creed. The favored language among Tradition 1
advocates is that Scripture has magisterial authority while the creeds have ministerial
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!12!I!am!indebted!to!the!definitions!collected!in!Jaroslav!Pelikan,!Credo:$
Historical$and$Theological$Guide$to$Creeds$and$Confessions$of$Faith$in$the$Christian$Tradition!(New!Haven,!CT:!Yale!University!Press,!2003),!2K4.!Other!definitions!I!found!helpful!(and!which!highlight!the!view!of!creeds!as!traditional!ways!of!reading!Scripture)!include!this!one!from!John!H.!Leith,!Creeds$of$the$Church:$A$Reader$in$Christian$Doctrine$from$the$Bible$to$the$Present,!rev.!ed.!(Richmond,!VA:!John!Knox!Press,!1973),!9:!“The!creeds!are!the!record!of!the!Church’s!interpretation!of!the!Bible!in!the!past!and!the!authoritative!guide!to!hermeneutics!in!the!present.”!Also!this!one!from!Kevin!J.!Vanhoozer,!The$Drama$of$Doctrine:$A$CanonicalMLinguistic$Approach$to$Christian$Theology$(Louisville,!KY:!Westminster!John!Knox!Press,!2005),!449:!“A!creed!is!an!abbreviated,!authorized,!and!adequate!summary!of!both!the!biblical!witness!and!the!preaching!and!teaching!of!the!universal!church.”!!
13!Carl!R.!Trueman,!The$Creedal$Imperative,!(Wheaton,!IL:!Crossway,!2012),!Kindle!edition,!location!188.!
14!Michael!Rea,!“Authority!and!Truth”!(an!unpublished!paper).!
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authority. Scripture is the master and the creeds are its servants. Using Rea’s model of
authority15 stated with the terminology of this discussion:
The Bible [A] is more authoritative than the Nicene Creed [B] (for a Christian
[C] in the domain of theology [D]) if, and only if, the Bible and the Nicene
Creed are both reasons for belief for Christians in the domain of theology, and
the reasons supplied by the Bible have priority for Christian theology over the
reasons supplied by the Nicene Creed.
This may be held as true unless one accepts the defeater claim that in the
domain of Christian theology (specifically, the understanding of the Trinity) the reasons
supplied by the creeds are more decisive for the Christian than the reasons supplied by the
Bible, perhaps because the creeds are clearer in this domain. That would be a dangerous
defeater to offer, however, as it would effectively make the Creed more authoritative than the
Bible in some theological domain.
Further, excepting the possibility of the defeater listed above, the Nicene
Creed is not a foundational authority for Christian theology: the Bible alone is. Again,
inserting relevant terms into Rea’s definition of a foundational authority,16 we may say:
The Bible is foundationally authoritative over Christians in the domain of
theology if, and only if, the Bible has authority over Christians in the domain !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
15!“A is more authoritative than B (for a person C, in a domain D) if, and only if, A and B are both sources of reasons for belief or action for C in D, and the reasons supplied by A have priority for C in D over the reasons supplied by B.”! !
16!Rea!formulates!the!notion!of!foundational!authority!thusly:!“A!is!foundationally!theoretically/practically)!authoritative!over!B!in!D!if,!and!only!if,!A!has!(theoretical/practical)!authority!over!B!in!D!and!there!is!no!source!of!(epistemic/practical)!reasons!for!B!in!D!that!is!more!authoritative!than!A.”!Note!that!this!definition!does!not!exclude!the!possibility!of!more!than!one!foundational!authority!for!B!in!D.!!
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of theology and there is no source of reasons for Christian theology that is
more authoritative than the Bible.
We affirm that this is so and, of course, this is really what is expressed in calling the Bible
the norma normans non normata.
I suggest that Scripture is authoritative for Christians for two reasons. First,
Christians have entered into a covenantal relationship with Christ and therefore into a special
relationship with His words. Christ described a perichoresis patterned after the Trinitarian
community that involves the disciples, the Father, the Spirit, Christ and His words (John
15:4-10; 16:12-15; 17, 21). Though one may “construe” the Bible in various ways, it is
acknowledged that the Bible is the Christian Scripture and David Kelsey points out that the
concept of authority is analytic in the concept “scripture.” “Part of what is said in calling a
text or set of texts ‘scripture’ is that it is ‘authority’ for the common life of the Christian
community.”17 Second, the Bible’s ontology as divine discourse puts it in such a relationship
with truth itself (Himself!) that even pragmatism (how much more discipleship!) demands
that we recognize the Bible as a de jure and de facto authority. Creeds, the Nicene Creed
included, do not share in this designation as Scripture or in the Bible’s special ontology.
To establish the Nicene Creed as an authority would require different grounds.
Likely some would point to the connection of the individual believer to the whole of Christ’s
ecclesial body, and the connection of the contemporary Church with the Church of ages past,
and then make a case for the ancient creeds as truly ecumenical, truly the consensus of the
Church throughout the ages, and truly adequate for the universal Church. More
fundamentally, though, one would need to specify what kind of authority the catholic Church !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
17!David!H.!Kelsey,!Proving$Doctrine:$The$Uses$of$Scripture$in$Modern$Theology!(Harrisburg,!PA:!Trinity!Press!International,!1999),!89.!!
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has, how the Church exercises that catholic authority, and that the creeds are such an exercise
of such authority.
The functional authority of confessions are clearer to me for the reason that
they are part of the covenant that the believer makes when she unites herself with a
congregation and/or denomination. Whereas the believer’s connection to the universal
Church is indirect, made through her connection with the Trinity— adopted by the Father,
baptized in the Spirit, and united with Christ18—she is united with the local body directly. By
baptism or confirmation, she agrees that the specific confession is a faithful summary of
Bible teaching and she agrees to be bound by that confession. Confessions, of course, are not
Scripture, but they are normative for the communities which choose them: the Christian
believer elects to be bound by a certain confession as she is bound up together with the
community over which the confession rules. In my view, the best confessions are written
with a consciousness that they are norma normata and therefore open to change in light of
Scriptural witness.19
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!18!Relevant!texts!include!1!Cor!12:12K27;!Gal!3:26K28;!Eph!1:3K14,!2:13K
22.!
19!For!example,!the!confession!to!which!I!have!committed!myself!states!in!the!preamble:!“Revision!of!these!statements!may!be!expected!…!when!the!church!is!led!by!the!Holy!Spirit!to!a!fuller!understanding!of!Bible!truth!or!finds!better!language!in!which!to!express!the!teachings!of!the!God’s!Holy!Word.”!“Fundamental!Beliefs!of!SeventhKday!Adventists”!in!the!SeventhMday$Adventist$Church$Manual$(Hagerstown,!MD:!Review!and!Herald,!2000),!9.!!
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The Nicene Creed20
This creed has much to recommend it as useful for Christians thinking and
talking about God. It is ancient and has stood the test of time—nearly 17 centuries of
Christian faith, practice, and life have been shaped by it. It is widely accepted by Christians,
almost unanimously so, and thus provides an agreement, a “togetherness,” in the Christian
Church which is too rare. It was produced, not by fringe rebels or fly-by-night theologians,
but by respected Church leaders from both East and West (though mostly East) in an
ecumenical setting. It is a sophisticated articulation of the relationship between Son and
Father, a document with a specificity that gives it great explanatory power. In my view, it
affirms that Bible teaching that the Son is equal with the Father, not a creature, but fully
divine.
Yet the Creed does have some features that give reason for pause regarding its
supposed status as an authority for Christian theology. First, the Council that wrote the Creed
was steeped in politics. The Jerusalem Council it was not! Not to say that the Holy Spirit is
unable to work through political scheming to illuminate the Scriptures, but it does suggest the
need for some critical distance. Second, the formulation itself is built using an extra-biblical
philosophical system without which its vocabulary is meaningless. The use of an extra-
biblical vocabulary or system does not necessarily indicate that a theological formulation is
anti-biblical, but it does signal the need for, again, some critical distance. Third, an elevation
of the Creed as a Christian authority rests on certain optimistic construals of the council as
“the Church.” !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
20!A translation by David Bell of the creed can be found in the appendix.
!
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Fourth, finally, and most importantly, those who advocate for the
authoritativeness of the Nicene Creed have not made clear the functionality of their claim.
They have not demonstrated what aspect(s) of the creed is (are) authoritative. Is it the entire
formulation, including the anathemas? Is it the vocabulary and wording, so that one must
parse ousia and stasis as the Eastern church understood them in order to know the Creed as
truly authoritative? The wording of the Creed was ambiguous even to its contemporary
audience, with differences particularly pronounced between East and West, so that it became
necessary in A.D. 362 to declare “that verbal differences were not important, as long as the
meaning was the same,” that is, as long as no one supported one of the rejected theologies.21
So perhaps it is the anathemas which are the most “authoritative” aspect of the Creed after
all.
Or maybe, as David Yeago argues, what is authoritative about the Creed is its
theological judgments and not “the conceptual terms in which those judgements are
rendered” so that “the same judgement can be rendered in a variety of conceptual terms.”22
Again, though, “one may affirm that there was a great ambiguity in the Nicene formula. The
creed, whose main purpose was to affirm the divinity of the Son could also be interpreted as
an affirmation of the divine unity.”23 Or it may be better to say that it is the Creed-as-
discourse that is “authoritative,” discourse of the Church or of the Spirit in the Church,
prompting questions that explore illocution and perlocution.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!21!Justo!L.!Gonzalez,!From$the$Beginnings$to$the$Council$of$Chalcedon,!vol.!1!
in$$A$History$of$Christian$Thought,!rev.!ed.!(Nashville:!Abingdon,!1987),!283.!
22!David!S.!Yeago,!“The!New!Testament!and!the!Nicene!Dogma:!A!Contribution!to!the!Recovery!of!Theological!Exegesis,”!Pro$Ecclesia$3,!no.!2!(Spr!1994):!159.!
23!Gonzalez,!271.!
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A separate question, predicated on an as-yet-undefined notion of authority, is
how the Creed exercises its authority (wherever it may be found) over the Church, so
authorizing her theologies. What do theologians mean exactly by saying creeds have
“ministerial” authority?
There does not appear to be agreement on exactly how authoritative creeds
function inside a system which purports to accept sola Scriptura and Scripture as its own
interpreter. Consider the unresolved tension in Ward, a proponent of Tradition 1. He is
distrustful of the Vincentian canon,24 seeing it as a move toward denying Scripture as its own
interpreter. Also, he believes that although “God uses teachers within the church to lead
believers into the truth of the Bible,”25 he looks for God’s own authoritative interpretation of
Scripture to come through Scripture, and not “through appointed church teachers making
supposedly decisive statements under the guidance of the Holy Spirit about the meaning of
Scripture.”26 Yet that is exactly what creeds claim to be and to do.
Objections
A. The Spirit of Jesus leads His Church. To neglect or reject as
authoritative the Nicene Creed—the declaration of the catholic Church—is to quench
the Holy Spirit.
A1. “The Church” is notoriously difficult to define concretely; finding the
exact boundaries of “the Church” has always been an impractical task. Which Church wrote
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!24!Ward,!108n12,!118.!
25!Ibid.,!116.!
26!Ibid.,!115K116.!
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the Nicene Creed? The Church universal? the Church majority? the Church general? the
Church official? the Church represented? the Church powerful? But setting aside this
significant difficulty, let us assume that the body convened at Nicaea qualifies as the Church
in the most satisfactory sense.
A2. That the Church made a theological decision does not in itself provide
enough assurance that it was led by the Spirit and is a correct decision. Although the
Scriptures do lead us to expect a close relationship between “the Spirit of Jesus Christ” (Phil
1:19) and the Church as the Body of Christ (Eph 5:23, Col 1:18), the Church has never been
pure and faultless, and the Bible warns of false teachers inside the Church (e.g., 2 Tim 3:1-5,
2 Pet 2:1-3, Jude 3-4).
A3. Scripture instructs believers not to “quench the Spirit” but to “test
everything” (1 Thess 5:19, 21). With what means are we to test everything, including the
creeds? By the standard of the Bible. This is what we mean by calling the Bible “canon,” and
this is what we mean when we call it “scripture.”
B. The Nicene Creed is “saying the same thing” as Scripture (in
Philippians 2, for example).27 Anyone who accepts the authority of Scripture should
also acknowledge the derived authority of this creed.
B1. In that the Nicene Creed is not identical to Philippians 2, they are
different. Where there is difference there may or may not be a difference in quality. In this
case, however, one qualitative difference between the two texts can be named: one is !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
27!David!Yeago!argues!convincingly!that!the!Nicene!use!of!homoousian!says!“the!same!thing”!as!Phil!2:6ff!in!the!article!reference!above.!
!
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canonical, the other is not. (I do not wish to suggest that Philippians 2 stands on its own, of
course. The reader can understand “Philippians 2” to be a shorthand way of saying
“Philippians 2 in the canonical context,” and an example of how to relate the Nicene Creed
with any Scripture text.) As inspired Scripture, Philippians 2 is a superior source of theology
to the Creed, which is a human attempt to conceptualize and rearticulate the message of
Jesus’ relationship to divinity found in Philippians 2.
B2. At best the Nicene Creed is derived from Philippians 2, making explicit
what the biblical text supposes implicitly. The Creed may be a useful way of clearly
explaining Philippians 2. It is possible, though, that the Creed provides just one option
among many for explaining how God can be Three and yet One. Or it may be that the Creed
is unhelpfully speculative, that it confuses, distorts, obscures, or even contradicts Philippians
2. I do not wish to claim that the Nicene Creed goes against the text in any of these ways; as I
said above, I am not arguing that the ancient creeds are wrong in their judgments about the
Trinity. My aim here is simply to say that since the Nicene Creed and Philippians 2 are
different, they may or may not have the same theology, the same judgments about the
Trinity, the same message about Jesus. The very pressing issue here is How does one know?
B3. In order to determine if the Creed is in harmony with the canon’s own
teaching about Jesus’ relationship to divinity, it is necessary to compare the Nicene formula
with an examination of the canonical text. This is exactly what Yeago does in his discussion
of the Nicene Creed and Philippians 2: he studies both texts, compares them, and concludes
that they indeed are making the same judgments about the same subjects for the same
purpose. My basic claim is that this examination and comparison is necessary, and that
attributing authority to the Creed obscures or denies this necessity.
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B4. It must be acknowledged that one cannot “just as easily get” the idea of
Jesus as fully divine and equal with the Father from the Bible as from the Creed. The Bible is
66 books from dozens of authors, using multiple metaphors and concepts to talk about the
Godhead. Nowhere is it as concerned with opposing Arianism, modalism, Sabellianism, or
monarchialism as is the Nicene Creed. So no, we cannot “just as easily get” the Christology
of the Nicence Creed from Scripture as from the Council’s formulation, but ease does not
authority make. We may get a useful and more easily accessed Christology from Nicaea, but
we can get an authoritative Christology only from Scripture.
C. The Nicene Creed provides the necessary “ruled reading” that
safeguards biblical truth and protects the Church from heresy.
C1. Ruled readings may ameliorate but they do not solve the problem of
indeterminate meaning. As discussed above, one fundamental issue is the locus of meaning
in the Creed itself. Beyond that problem, the Creed is limited in its ability to oppose heresy.
Creeds as “rules” are occasional and anti-heretical in intent, so they are useful for narrowing
the range of acceptable readings of the biblical text to exclude certain heresies, but they are
unable to fix only certain readings as authoritative and so exclude all heretical readings. The
Nicene Creed was written to address Arianism, not Open Theism, for example.
C2. If the rule is correct, the problem of indeterminate meaning has been
ameliorated but not removed by the use of the Creed. The problem has shifted from say,
Philippians 2 to the Nicene Creed. If Nicaea is the authoritative interpretation of Philippians
2, we must ask whose interpretation of Nicaea is the authoritative one. The Eastern or the
Western one? Of course, there is always the difficulty of translation and then individual
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interpretation of the creed. If we are uncomfortable with the vulnerabilities of Scripture to
heretical interpretations and therefore require a creed to provide an authoritative
interpretation of it, we soon find ourselves in an unfortunate regression of authoritative
interpretation. The Creed cannot remove us from the hermeneutical circle.28
C3. If we do not allow that the Bible text, unaided by “authoritative
interpretations,” has determinate, accessible meaning, then the text is no longer capable of
exercising authority. Here some objectors would cry, “Yes, but isn’t all understanding
mediated? No one reads, much less understands, the Bible ‘alone,’ apart from all aids.” I
agree! However, I do not accept any such aids as theological authorities. Tools, helps,
means? Yes. Context and medium? Yes. But authorities? No.
C4. If the Bible has determinate, accessible meaning, then the Bible is a
sufficient teacher of at least the core Christian doctrines. It would be a rather poor Scripture
if it could do only less than this. Advocates of creedal authority may here object, “It is
Scripture read in the right way that teaches true doctrine.” I agree. No text can be read any
which way. It is a separate question to ask how creeds relate to this “right way” of reading.
On this point, McGrath summarizes Tradition 1 by saying that it views
tradition as “a ‘traditional way of interpreting Scripture.’”29 This is far from self-evident,
however. This claim, in fact, is part of a larger argument justifying the use by the magisterial
Reformers of certain councils and theologians of the patristic era”—including the resultant
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!28!McGrath!notes!that!even!in!a!Tradition!2!model!in!which!“the!authority!
of!scripture!was!guaranteed!by!the!authority!of!its!interpreter!–!the!church,!under!the!divine!guidance!of!the!Holy!Spirit,”!“disagreement!over!the!nature!and!location!of!theological!authority”!led!to!rampant!pluralism.!McGrath,!99.!
29!Ibid.,!97.!
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creeds—as “genuine authority in matters of doctrine.”30 Those councils produced not
methodological manifestos, but “authorized” conclusions, not ways but ends. Therefore it
would be more fitting to read the claim for Tradition 1 thus: “‘tradition’ refers to ‘traditional
conclusions about what Scripture says.’”
McGrath positions Tradition 1 and the necessity of authoritative creeds over
against those who want to interpret Scripture “in any random way,” heretics and Tradition 0
adherents, presumably. Given the choice between “any random” reading of Scripture and
authoritative creeds, I sympathize with Tradition 1. The way one reads Scripture is important,
but to claim that authoritative creeds are necessary to avoid random reading is to admit that
the internal controls of the text itself are insufficient to the task.
C5. Again we return to the pressing issue of knowing. From whence did the
Council members “get” the theology that is expressed in the Nicene Creed? Was it from the
Spirit speaking through the Scriptures? If so, then why is that same privilege not afforded to
other Christians? Why cannot Christians of all epochs be able to make the same
Christological affirmations on the same grounds—on the Spirit speaking in the Scriptures?
The ancient Christians did not need the Nicene Creed in order to believe what they wrote
therein. But if the Council members did not formulate this creed “by Scripture alone,” then
the Nicene Creed is an example of Tradition 2, not Tradition 1 as some advocate.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!30!Ibid.,!104.!
!
!
!
! 16!
D. “No creed but the Bible” promotes private judgment, the root of all
heresy!
D1. Individual judgment is necessary; individualism is not. Although every
person belongs to multiple communities (chief among them the Church), each person has an
individual responsibility before God. Those who oppose Tradition 0, and likely also
Tradition 0.5, dislike any suggestion of “private judgment,” imagining the lone thinker with
his Bible who feels himself above the community and apart from it. I too would urge such a
person to abandon his overblown conceits of private judgment—but I cannot see any way
around the necessity of personal judgment done in a community. This personal judgment is
necessitated by the personal agency and accountability given to each person. “The biblical
testimony encourages the readers to study the Bible for themselves in order to understand
God’s message to them (e.g., Deut 30:11-14; Luke 1:3, 4; John 20:30-31; Acts 17:11; Rom
10:17; Rev 1:3).”31 This study should include an openness to other Christian voices past and
present, and an awareness of one’s own tradition both as a means of instruction and as the
context of interpretation. Yet ultimately one must make a personal judgment on matters of
doctrine.
History indicates that the Reformers had a change of mind on this matter.
Although the Reformation began with what McGrath calls “exegetical optimism … evident
in the suggestion that the ordinary Christian could understand scripture,”32 as it grew in
power and resources it resorted to providing “authoritative” interpretations of Scripture to its
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!31!Richard!M.!Davidson,!“The!Role!of!the!Church!in!the!Interpretation!of!
Scripture”!(paper!presented!at!the!Third!Symposium!on!the!Bible!and!Adventist!Scholarship,!Akumal,!Mexico,!March!19K25,!2006),!18.!
32!McGrath,!111,!
! 17!
members, people thought to be incapable of arriving at a true reading of Scripture unless it
was handed to them. “It is one of the ironies of the Lutheran Reformation,” for instance,
“that a movement which laid such stress upon the importance of scripture should
subsequently deny its less educated members direct access to that same scripture, for fear that
they might misinterpret it (in other words, reach a different interpretation than that of the
magisterial Reformers).”33 Ironically, Ward’s sharp criticism of Tradition 0 may come back
to bear on Tradition 1: “Within a Christian community it often comes to place great store on
the interpretation of Scripture offered by an individual.”34 Like Luther or Calvin, perhaps?
The unspoken reasoning seems to be that the Council members at Nicaea had access to true
doctrine in the Scripture by the Spirit, the Reformers had that same access, but the average
member must take the doctrine of the Trinity on the basis of an authoritative Creed, not an
inscrutable Scripture.
D2. Advocates of Tradition 1 are themselves exercising this personal
judgment as evidenced in the selectivity of the tradition they wish to retrieve from historic
Christianity for contemporary use. Why is the Council at Nicaea authoritative but the Council
of Trent is not? Because, they would argue, Nicaea is biblical and Trent is not! The ones who
praise Yeago’s insightful analysis of the Nicene Creed as proving its authority ought not to
deny that Yeago exercised his personal judgment in making the claim that Nicaea is
biblical—as they also do when they agree with him. What Tradition 1 proponents deride in
others as “private judgment” is inexplicably called “conviction” in the magisterial Reformers.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!33!Ibid.,!114.!
34!Ward,!148.!
! 18!
If we mean what we say in calling the Bible “Scripture” and “canon,” then it
is clear that the Nicene Creed must be judged by the Scriptures. Given this, what is the
functional difference between Tradition 1 and Tradition 0.5? How does a Tradition 1 believer
make judgments about Christology? What has the decisive say-so? If the Christian is true to
her claim that the Nicene Creed is a “normed norm,” then must she not ask the Creed critical
questions and make a personal judgment regarding its agreement with the “norming norm”?
If not, then how does the Bible norm creeds?
Conclusion
In summary, I see no functional difference between a Tradition 1 that judges
the creeds by Scripture and Tradition 0.5 that does the same but does not acknowledge them
as authoritative. I find particularly objectionable the implication that laypeople do not have
access to the basic truths of Scripture except through authorized doctrinal formulations.
Attributing authority to creeds is problematic because there seems no clear way to properly
relate this “ministerial” authority with the fundamental, normative, magisterial authority of
Scripture. I find the concept of authority so problematic in relation to creeds that I wish
rather to use different language and refer to the creeds as useful, helpful theological resources
for Christians of all epochs. That’s something that Tradition 0.5 can get behind.
! 19!
APPENDIX
The Nicene Creed
We believe in one God, Father, almighty, maker of all things, visible and
invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten from the Father, only-
begotten, that is, from the substance (ousia) of the Father, God from God, light from light,
true God from true God, begotten not made, consubstantial (homoousios) with the Father,
through whom all things came into being, both things in heaven and things on earth; who,
because of us humans and because of our salvation, came down and became incarnate, and
became human; he suffered and rose on the third day, he ascended into the heavens, and he
will come to judge the living and the dead; and in the Holy Spirit. But as for those who say,
“There was, when he was not”, and “Before he was begotten, he was not”, and that “he came
into existence out of nothing’” or who allege the Son of God to be “of a different hypostasis
or substance (ousia)”, or “created”, or “changeable”, or “mutable”: these the holy universal
and apostolic Church anathematizes.35
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!35!David!N.!Bell,!A$Cloud$of$Witnesses:$An$Introduction$to$the$Development$
of$Christian$Doctrine$to$AD$500,$2nd!rev.!ed.!(Kalamazoo,!MI:!Cistercian!Publications,!2007),!72.!
! 20!
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Evangelicals and the Nicene Faith: Proclaiming the Apostolic Witness, edited by Timothy George. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011.
Bell, David N. A Cloud of Witnesses: An Introduction to the Development of Christian Doctrine to A.D. 500. 2nd ed. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 2007.
Davidson, Richard M. “The Role of the Church in the Interpretation of Scripture.” Paper presented at the Third Symposium on the Bible and Adventist Scholarship, Akumal, Mexico, March 19-25, 2006.
Gonzalez, Justo L. From the Beginnings to the Council of Chalcedon. Vol. 1 of A History of Christian Thought. Rev. ed. Nashville: Abingdon, 1987.
Jenson, Robert W. Canon and Creed. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2010.
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Mathison, Keith A. The Shape of Sola Scriptura. Moscow, ID: Canon, 2001.
McGrath, Alister E. Reformation Thought: An Introduction. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1988.
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Pelikan, Jaroslav. Credo: Historical and Theological Guide to Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003.
Seventh-day Adventist Church Manual. 16th ed. Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald, 2000.
Treier, Daniel J. Introducing Theological Interpretation of Scripture: Recovering a Christian Practice. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008.
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_________. Is There a Meaning in this Text?: The Bible, the Reader, and the Morality of Literary Knowledge. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1998.
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Ward, Timothy. Words of Life: Scripture as the Living and Active Word of God. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Acadmic, 2009.
Yeago, David S. “The New Testament and the Nicene Dogma: A Contribution to the Recovery of Theological Exegesis.” Pro Ecclesia 3, no. 2 (Spr 1994): 152-164.